Maximizing search potential

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I'm looking for input/suggestions on how to really tap into this incredibly large library that I now have with L4. I am having difficulty finding things topically.

Here's just an example. I was looking for information on how believers will be judged in the future, and so I typed in judgement of believers This returned 12,608 results which is so many as to not be helpful at all in finding something useful.

So then I typed it in with quotation marks "judgement of believers" and I got zero results... which is also not helpful.

It seems that I have to have a pretty good idea of how authors will refer to certain topics before I can really do a useful search. For example, if I type "judgement seat of Christ" I get 521 hits, but that is a phrase straight from scripture, so I may as well just do a reference search on that one.

any thoughts on this question?

Bryan

Theological Reflection with Practical Application

Using Logos 4.2a Beta 5, searching Large Text in Entire Library for judgement NEAR believers found 16 results (compared to 5,635 results for All Text), which is better than 0 results for Title and Topic searches.

It takes a while to get the hang of how searching works. Without the quotes, there's an implied AND between all the search terms, as in Google searching. So Logos will look for all three of those words, and find you places where the three of them occur together in the same article . That could be a long stretch of text in some resources. The "article" divisions vary from resource to resource. Could be a section of a chapter, or a journal article, or a Bible pericope. But you'll get better results if you leave out the small words (such as "of") and use the proximity search operators (NEAR, BEFORE, WITHIN). So for example:

judgement NEAR believers finds 97 hits in my library

judgement WITHIN 2 words believers finds 13 hits

Another issue is that you're using an uncommon spelling of judgement. The most accepted way of spelling it in English across the English-speaking world (except in the UK in non-legal contexts) is judgment, not judgement. However there are plenty of authors who will use the latter spelling. I get over 321,000 hits for judgment and only 16,000 hits for judgement. If you want to be complete, you'd need to search for both spellings. You can do that using a "wildcard" character: judg*ment. The * matches zero or more occurrences of any letter. So this syntax will find both judgment and judgement.

judg*ment NEAR believers finds 3706 hits

judg*ment WITHIN 2 words believers finds 495 hits - this is probably the best option among the ones I've mentioned

If you sort your search results by Book (or Title if you're using the beta version) you'll be able to hone in on the most relevant results.

The best way to limit your search is to set up some collections for theological resources, bible dictionaries, apologetics etc. Once that is done you can limit your searches by collection.

I also recommend using the Cited By tool using 2 cor 5.10 as your reference. I found this article right away when searching my theological resources:

Believers Will Be Judged. In writing to Christians Paul says, “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God … . Each of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:10, 12). He also tells the Corinthians, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10; cf. Rom. 2:6–11; Rev. 20:12, 15). In addition, the picture of the final judgment in Matthew 25:31–46 includes Christ separating the sheep from the goats, and rewarding those who receive his blessing. Grudem's Systematic Theology.

There were also many direct articles in my bible dictionaries as well.

Even though you state you might as well do a reference search, that is probably one of the best ways to limit the hits on this topic either directly or using the cited by tool.

The other thing to remember is that searches can be improved, so you might not get them right first time. That's OK. Let me walk through how I might do this search.

The obvious start is judgement NEAR believers. There's an obvious problem with the results: most of the early results are for Bibles.

Therefore create a collection that excludes Bibles (you'll use this often in searches) and re-run the search. The syntax for the collection is rating:>=0 ANDNOT (type:bible)

The next problem (in my library at least) is that I'm getting results like "…judges us when we die. But I believe…". That's because Match all Word Forms is one. Normally that's helpful, but in this case it's not, so turn it off and re-run the search.

Now you should have really relevant results (see the screenshot below). But to be sure we're not missing anything we need to synonyms and add back in word forms that we do want. Something like this: (judgement, judgment) NEAR (believers, believer)

Two more tips:

It doesn't necessarily matter if you return hundreds of thousands of results if you have a good query, and your results are Ranked or By Count. The best results should come to the top.

If you rate all your resources, you can create a collection of your favourite resources (using the syntax rating:>3) and just search in there.

Using Logos 4.2a Beta 5, searching Large Text in Entire Library for judgement NEAR believers

Hi all, I'm trying to work through all the great suggestions today and want to post here some further questions regarding your suggestions. Keep Smiling, you mention that you were searching "Large Text" in Entire Library. What did you mean by that? Is it possible to only search the "large text" in the resources?

In the search dialogs, if I click the All Text carrot, I get some options, pictured below...

The "untitled" options appear to be custom markups that I created while taking notes once.

I looked under all of these, but couldn't find "Large Text" anywhere. I did find the option "titles" when I clicked on the carrot next to "search fields", and I thought, "OK, I'll click titles and it will only search the titles in my resources," but when I looked at the results, it didn't return anything (searching: Judgement NEAR believers)

So then I tried to go up and modify the search and my drop down now looks like this.

Notice that the carrot next to "search fields is open, but I can't modify anything! I figured out that the missing options was due to the fact that I have a single resource (MacArthur's commentary on 1 Corinthians) in the search. But why won't it let me search this single resource for "titles"? And is "title" referring to title of book or title of a paragraph or what?

Theological Reflection with Practical Application

That's a new feature still in beta testing, so it won't be available to you yet if you're not using the beta version, which I'm guessing you're not.

bryan jay:

Notice that the carrot next to "search fields is open, but I can't modify anything! I figured out that the missing options was due to the fact that I have a single resource (MacArthur's commentary on 1 Corinthians) in the search.

That means this particular resource is not tagged with any "Titles" -- that is used for the titles of images and maps in resources. To see some examples, do a search for the in the Title field in your Entire Library.

The search fields menu only shows fields that are available in the currently selected resources.

You can see which fields are available in individual resources by clicking on the (i) icon on a resource.

Contrary to expectation, the 'title' field is generally not used for actual titles in resources (for which largetext is more useful). The wiki says that the 'title' field is "The title of an object, usually an image or media element", as Rosie says.

I'm appreciating your videos. Thanks for taking the time to make them.

I have a question about the "cited by" tool. I read the wiki and it doesn't seem to match up with the Mac version of the software. I am unable to click in the upper left corner of the "cited by" window in order to change the options. When I select a reference, it shows me hits for all my different collections and it is too much to manage. Is it possible to limit the "cited by" tool in the mac version in order to make it more usable?

I am using L4 Mac and here is what I get when I click the resource panel at the upper it provides the same options as the L4 Win. Have tried restarting L4? Perhaps you will need to post logs if it is not working, but it is available in L4 Mac.

Theological Reflection with Practical Application

Here is a shot of what I get when I open the "cited by" tool. It doesn't look anything at all like yours, John.

Bryan

John's is shown with the panel menu dropped down. Click on the orange icon in the upper left corner of your Cited By tool and you'll see the menu.

EDIT: John also has Follow turned off, which explains why he doesn't have the orange asterisk icon. (On the dropdown menu you can select any Link Set or Follow; and if you select None instead it will turn this off completely.) John's Cited By tool also appears to be repositioned in a main tab instead of the Tool side bar, so that's why he has the larger panel menu icon instead of what would be a small dropdown arrow on yours if you turn Follow off. To do this you drag the Cited By tool by its tab into the main resource tab area and drop it where you want it, either filling the full tab area, or splitting it in half.

Here is a shot of what I get when I open the "cited by" tool. It doesn't look anything at all like yours, John.

Bryan

John's is shown with the panel menu dropped down. Click on the orange icon in the upper left corner of your Cited By tool and you'll see the menu.

EDIT: John also has Follow turned off, which explains why he doesn't have the orange asterisk icon. (On the dropdown menu you can select any Link Set or Follow; and if you select None instead it will turn this off completely.) John's Cited By tool also appears to be repositioned in a main tab instead of the Tool side bar, so that's why he has the larger panel menu icon instead of what would be a small dropdown arrow on yours if you turn Follow off. To do this you drag the Cited By tool by its tab into the main resource tab area and drop it where you want it, either filling the full tab area, or splitting it in half.

Mac 4.0b SR-4 screenshot - Cited By open in default location on right side of screen with follow - clicked upper left to display menu:

Followed by copying Cited By panel to new tab, then dragging tab to different panel - then turned off follow, searched for strong's greek #, clicked larger icon to display menu:

Observation: personally prefer Louw-Nida #'s in New Testament - a Strong's # can have several Louw-Nida #'s based on semantic domain (contextual) usage.

Bug ? - Logos 4.2a Beta 7 basic search of all text in entire library using wildcards does not include any bibles: judg*ment WITHIN 4 WORDS believer*

Hi KS4J,

I have just tried a Bible search using the string "judgment WITHIN 4 WORDS believer" (so no wildcard) against "All Bibles" and don't find any hits.

So it doesn't look like a bug, just no matches!

Graham

Thanks + concur - learned search judg*ment WITHIN 8 WORDS believer* does find some bibles. Also Thanks to Mark Barnes, learned ANDNOT (type:bible) has no effect when searching all text in entire library - now to create a collection.